Archive for March 29, 2012

David Cortes of Southern California’s Wing Agency writes recently in MediaPost about Hispanics overindexing in internet usage and social media use. I’ll admit that the title of the article, “Abuelas, The New General Market for Social Media” lead me to expect an essay about elderly Latinos’ use of the internet. I thought it would be refreshing, since so many trend pieces discuss the young, bicultural Latino (demographic studies show this population booming), but marketers should not ignore the older Hispanic.

However, Cortes wrote about Hispanics’ overall approach to internet use, and this line stood out to me: In the 2010 AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy, Hispanics expressed that they believe marketers are coming up short when attempting to engage Hispanics online and that they believe English sites are more comprehensive, detailed and useful than their Spanish-language counterparts. This line reveals a lot. Regardless of whether they are young or old, Latinos online are looking for relevant content, and often find that websites with clearly translated material- a pale copy of the original English- are sorely lacking. It is of course more budget-friendly to translate a website quickly and cheaply than to invest in original content. But if original content will result in loyal customers, isn’t it worth it?